Wednesday, 24 October 2012

A
recent lecture in London highlighted the perils of any sort of foreign
intervention, military or even humanitarian, in the meat-grinder of current day
Syria. With the violence and bloodshed mounting and spilling over into Lebanon,
with the flood of refugees pouring into Turkey and Jordan the pressure is
increasing to ‘do something.’ But what, exactly? What assistance? To whom
should it go? How should it be delivered? And, most important of all, what
would be the consequences of any external assistance?

One
of the biggest issues dividing the Syrian opposition is this question of
external assistance. Is it good, bad, or even necessary? To briefly summarize
the current line-up: Russia and Iran are actively supporting the regime of
Bashar al-Assad. The opposition, meanwhile, receives overt support from Qatar
and Saudi Arabia. Other countries like Turkey are supporting the opposition,
but so far have stopped short of providing heavy weapons or soldiers.

The
United States, for its part, still bears the scars from its lethal aid to the mujahideen fighting the Russians in
Afghanistan in the 1980s. The U.S. is also concerned about the alleged stockpiles of
chemical weapons held by the Syrian regime falling into the hands of jihadist elements that have infiltrated
the Syrian opposition forces.

Your new best friends in Syria?

And
then there are people like Dr. Haitham Manna, the Paris-based spokesman for an
opposition group called the National Committee for Democratic Change who pleaded
with an audience at the London School of Economics to work for a non-violent
solution that avoided taking any
external assistance. According to Dr. Manna any external assistance would
merely distort what started as a non-violent anti-regime protest against the
arrest of 15 school children in Dar’a in March 2011. He maintains that such external assistance would merely make the country
hostage to people supplying the assistance. He said the original goal of
protestors was to create a non-sectarian, democratic Syria, and that it is
naïve to think that this could be accomplished merely by changing its political
alliances or resorting to violence.

Dr. Haitham Manna

In
an earlier interview with Jadaliyya he
said Syria “will become prisoners to international aid and those non-democratic
forces in the Gulf States who wish that there will be a fiscal crisis.” He was
referring to the support that Qatar and Saudi Arabia have given to the
opposition forces in Syria. He also questioned how much would be gained in the
long term by swapping Russian support for American support.

This
position puts him at squarely odds with other opposition groups, namely the
Syrian National Council, that want ‘friendly’ countries to mount a Libyan-style
attack and force a military solution to the civil war. The situation is further
complicated by sectarian divisions among the regime’s opponents. Some want a
bloody Sunni-Alawite confrontation, some want a jihadist Islamic state, others simply want a democratic state
controlled by and for Syrians.

Dr.
Manna kept stressing the point that Syria is not Libya, and that it has several
different ethnic and religious groups. “Any solution that does not include all
the different groups in Syria is bound to fail,” he told the largely sceptical
audience.

“If
we take Arab nationalism too far we marginalize the non-Arabs such as the Kurds
and others. If we take Islamic ideology too far then we do away with
approximately 40% of the people. We have no right to do any of this,” he said
in the Jadaliyya interview.

The
tone of the questions from the audience in London indicated that Dr. Manna’s
plea for non-violence was falling on rocky ground; that it was too late to wind
the clock back to the days of peaceful demonstrations of unarmed civilians.

“What
do you expect me to do when someone comes to my home with a gun and threatens
me and my family? Meekly give in?” one person asked bitterly. Others pointed
out that Dr. Manna is based in Paris and questioned his right to give advice to
people fighting for their lives every day.

He
bravely responded by noting that his own brother was killed by the regime and poignantly
asked the questioners “How has the situation improved since we began fighting?”
He has a point, but at this stage not too many people are listening.

So
what is the end-game to the bloody stalemate in Syria? The opposition forces do
not seem to have the heavy weapons required to defeat the well-armed forces of
the regime, and the regime seems incapable of finishing off the rebels. Some
say there is no solution as long as Bashar al-Assad and his ruling clique
remain in power or even in the country. Others, like Dr.Manna, insist that any
solution ignoring the legitimate fears of the minority Alawite regime and its
supporters would be short-lived.

‘Compromise’
is not a frequently used word in the Middle East. But just possibly in this
situation a compromise worked out by the Syrian people themselves and supported
by the contending external forces may be the only way to keep the country from
splitting into bitterly opposed mini-states established on ethnic and religious
grounds. Wildly optimistic? Perhaps, but it is difficult to see any other
result that doesn’t increase the instability of an already unstable region.

Monday, 8 October 2012

With
much of the world’s attention focused on the expanding war in Syria and
increasing tensions with Iran it is easy to ignore the serious potential for
major problems in an area largely overlooked for the last 30 years – the Sinai Peninsula.
The scene of at least four major conflicts between Israel and Egypt from 1948
to 1973 this 61,000 km2 triangle of desert, jagged mountains, glittering tourist resorts and deep biblical significance
has once again become a flash point in a region that does not need any more
flash points.

For
more than 30 years the Sinai was more or less ruled according to the so-called
Camp David Accords signed by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister
Menachem Begin of Israel in September 1978. Israel agreed to withdraw from the
Sinai that it had conquered in 1967, evacuate 4,500 civilians, guarantee
freedom of passage between Egypt and Jordan, and return the oil fields in the
western Sinai. Egypt agreed to limit its forces in the Sinai, and guarantee
freedom of passage for Israeli ships through Suez Canal and the straits of
Tiran. The two antagonists opened formal diplomatic relations in 1980.

As
Pelham notes, however, “the old accords underpinning regional stability have
failed to keep pace with the changing times.” These accords were created when
Egyptian and Israeli security forces ruled supreme. Now the emergence of the
Hamas government in Gaza, newly assertive indigenous Bedouin tribes, jihadis,
and other ‘non-state’ players in the region coupled with the weakened central
control of the Egyptian government in Cairo has created a volatile situation filled
with conflicting interests just waiting for the right fuse.

These
simmering tensions have resulted in repeated attacks on the gas pipeline from
Egypt to Jordan and Israel. More serious was the attack in August 2012 on an
Egyptian military base in which 16 soldiers were killed. On top of these
incidents have been the cross-border raids where militants killed several
Israelis. There was also a missile attack on Eilat on the eve of the 2012
Passover holiday. Israel has responded in predictable fashion by moving
additional troops into the area and building a high wall along the 240
kilometre border with the Sinai. Tourism in the area was hit by attacks on the
Gold Coast of Sharm al-Sheikh. Egypt’s response to the August 2012 attack was to move against the vast
tunnel system used to transport goods and weapons into Gaza from Sinai.

The key tourist town of Sharm al-Sheikh

Local
Bedouin tribes in the area have long been frustrated by wide-spread
discrimination against them by the Egyptian authorities in everything from
employment to land titles. Pelham notes that the rampant development of the
‘Red Sea Riviera’ in the 1990s and 2000s that was protected by a military
cordon created a great deal of resentment as local Bedouin were pushed away
from the southern coast. Since the fall of Mubarak these tribes have seized the
opportunity to create new facts on the ground.

Relations
between the Hamas government of Gaza and the Mubarak regime had been marked by
mutual suspicion. Egyptian suspicion of Hamas’ anti-regime activities led to
frequent closure of the Gaza-Sinai border and arrest of Hamas members accused
of helping the militant bombings of the southern Sinai tourist resorts. With
the election of the allied Moslem Brotherhood government in Egypt Hamas has
attempted to show that it can be a force for regional stability rather than a
home for militant Islamist attacks on Egypt as well as Israel. Hamas has
pledged not to use Egyptian territory for back-door attacks on Israel and has
curtailed the operational freedom it had given to some Islamist groups for
actions against Israel.

Part of the elaborate tunnel system between Sinai and Gaza

Many
in the United States Congress want to know if the new Egyptian government will
continue to honor the Camp David Accords. A much better question is how to
bring these accords in line with realities that did not exist in 1978. The time
has come for some fresh thinking on how to bring stability to this region before
it erupts even more. A good place to start would be Pelham’s suggestions of
formally including Hamas in discussions of regional stability, fully
integrating the Bedouin into formal structures of Egyptian rule in the Sinai,
and formalize the access and trade relations between Gaza, the Sinai and
Israel. Bringing these disparate groups inside the tent may be unwieldy and
distasteful to many. But maintaining the fiction that they exist only at the
margins will only lead to more unrest for all concerned.

Followers

About Me

I worked as a fund manager and investment banker in Turkey and the Middle East for 25 years. Over the years I have travelled extensively throughout the region and have met many of the leading government officials, business and cultural leaders. I am married to a Greek and now divide my time between London, Turkey, and an island in the Aegean.